RIPENING SEASONS

Issue #20, February 1997

With this issue we begin the initial draft of a book tentatively
titled:

. : Living a Seasonal Life : .

The Natural Life we Actually Live(in spite of our best efforts to the contrary)

Chapter 1: An
Introduction

The rewarding aspects of growing old
are plentiful enough, I can assure you, to require all the fingers of
one arthritic hand, for a full count.

But don't let that despair you of advanced age, for numbered among
them is one particular blessing that tends to keep the fires lit,
ever each day anew, and it even seems to get better as the years
accumulate. Though, strange as it may seem, you might never have read
note of it before this moment, for it requires a seasonal awareness
to fully realize how marvelous it is.

I speak of the renewal of a morning - of virtually every morning,
if one will be a bit patient with the half-hour, or so, of transition
to this threshold of Grace, from the end of a night's slumber. And it
might take a bit longer, if you're old enough to have crossed into
the territory of creaking joints and groaning starts. But it's these
very souls who get the biggest payoff, for they have also outlived
life's conditioning to the `electric rooster ritual': that enforced
early morning lurch, at his beep-beep-beep, to stumble numbly into
semi-conscious reality for another round of the daily grind -
defeating any possibility of remaining in touch with the true nature
of a morning.

The post-alarm-clock lifestyle lets the day seep slowly in,
allowing the morn to reveal its own realizations, provide its own
cues - and, lo, the miracle arrives: a vitality and freshness-of-mind
entirely reclaimed from that late-night self dragged so heavily to
bed. Or even the afternoon self, wearied often to the point of need
for a nap, these days, at such an unreasonably early hour. The
morning self, after all these years, is yet and again newly alive
with clarity, purpose, and a fair degree of energy.

It may surprise you to know that the
word `morning' is derivative from morn, not the other way around.
Morn is the older word, denoting a moment in time, relative to the
course of a day. Morning is a verb, a present participle that
describes what is happening at that moment: the day is morning
. . . or more likely, it is we, ourselves, who are morning, at
that time of day. And in the process of morning, we are being
rejuvenated, or `made young again.'

But don't suppose that we are talking about some special state of
Grace that arrives only with one's advancing years. Certainly not!
The `morning' experience happens every day of our lives. It's just
that we long ago forgot to notice, or we let life distract us from
the wonder of it, or else we are just plain dulled to what Nature, as
a personal experience, is all about.

Aging offers, perhaps, the gift of a more intense contrast that
serves to heighten the distinctiveness of the morning condition. We
in life's late stage are only too aware that we don't grow literally
younger in the course of a night's sleep. What was withered at
midnight is just as withered at dawn, in strictly physiological terms
- yet, some new element has briefly come into play (come in to
play?). An element that tangibly lifts the spirit and all of its
functions (energy, clarity, the entire compos mentis that it
vitalizes) beyond the decrepitude of the slowly dying body.

We've been inspirited by Nature, herself, with the arrival of
morn. And for such little thought as we commonly give to these
occasions, they may very well be some of the strongest evidence we
have, of our linkage to the world of Nature. Or to put it another
way, this morning experience of rejuvenation tells us we are
no longer looking at 'Nature out there', but actually Being Nature
Within. This is the sort of thing we shall be exploring in the
pages to follow: the many instances of such evidence - of a
qualitative influence that Nature's cycle of time brings into
our lives. We'll be looking at the passages and trail markers that
constitute a pattern language with which we have all but lost
conscious touch, in the course of our `civilization.' A pattern
language that can be applied with equal relevance to any number of
time frames, for the sake of better understanding our lives. For it
constitutes a previously unrecognized archetype of consciousness, as
will be shown by its easy `readability' in familiar structures of
cyclic time - structures that are diverse in their origins, and
hardly thus likely to present any such commonality of effect.

The idea that time may be a qualitative function, as well as
quantitative, is an entirely radical perspective, so let's briefly
develop it before going on. I've annotated one small portion of the
day's round, here, with a look at its opening hours. I might just as
easily have referenced spring-time's effect on our psyche and energy,
which is a bit less taken for granted and thus more visible, though
it's generally understood as our response to changes in the physical
world around us: the longer, brighter days and their new spring
growth everywhere evident. It is clearly an `awakening,' of sorts,
nevertheless - an up-tempo function just like morning. Or I might
have pointed out the absolutely uncontainable energy of childhood -
but this, alas, is `known' to be an aspect of early development in a
life-cycle quite unrelated to the surrounding natural world. Such is
the extent of our alienation from Nature.

Now, doesn't it seem a bit remarkable, on reflection, that we
experience a surge in vitality, readily comparable, at equivalent
stages along three absolutely unrelated cycles of time: the day, the
year, and the lifetime? Or is it so commonplace that this `apparent
coincidence' still fails to register in provocative terms? Might it
perhaps suggest that our understanding of time - as a strictly linear
measurement of life's passage, deficient of any inherent qualitative
function - falls somewhat short of the reality experience?

Yes, there would appear to be something deplorably shallow and
meaningless about `counting time,' doing a robot-trip on the sum
total of minutes, hours, days and years, while all around us - and
surely inside of us - growth and change is taking place, in
interlaced patterns. Maturation and ripening, with all sorts of
implications and consequences. Clearly, these elements reflect
the actual nature of real (genuine!) time.

The metronome count is a kind of spurious time, a `virtual time,'
by contrast - a lifeless mechanism that nevertheless steals our
attention and focus from time's greater possibilities of enrichment.
On account of this shift, for example, time is up for barter when we
equate it with money, to the detriment and oblivion of its deeper
function. We make no distinction between spending time to earn our
necessities, and spending it to earn what time by itself can provide.
We have, after all, a chronoramic staging area, in which
time's qualitative fullness, with its infinite capacity for subtle
expression, presents the world . . . but we never see it this way,
being preoccupied with the monotonous count of dollars, as the time
we trade tick-tocks steadily away.

Well, I mean to offer the essential basis for a corrective, in the
pages to come, distilled from a quarter-century of season-watching
and learning the ways of this pattern language as it has impacted on
my own world. Tracking the pattern as the years have gone by, I've
observed how it varies, how it remains the same, I've validated the
regularity of significant passages and cue-moments, cross-checked the
parallel structure of other time frames, and have finally
internalized the entire flow. I suppose you could say that I've
become a seasonalist - perhaps the modern world's first (for I have
no doubt that ancient peoples lived in much the same constancy of
awareness), as I've not yet found anyone else who understands the
seasons quite as I do.

Which, of course, raises the question of whether I'll be writing
about something peculiarly personal, or - as I claim - with universal
significance. And I do have to acknowledge, here, that both
elements are involved. The problem is not one that I can resolve,
except by laying out for you all the evidence of universality, along
with the insights of my own experience. You, as an individual reader,
must relate them both to your own intuitions, and make the judgement
for yourself. But you won't be any surer free of the problem than
I.

There can be no such thing as an objective study of seasonal
influence, for it ultimately hinges on personal experience. My study
began with a recognition of certain pattern elements in my own year,
and I assumed at first that I was exploring a strictly personal
phenomenon. Then I began to discover evidence in the calendar lore of
earlier cultures that quite clearly paralleled my own experience, and
I realized I was tapping into something universal, though it had lost
all recognition in our own time, except for remnants in fable and
metaphor.

We commonly, for example, invoke
seasonal metaphors for lifetime passages, as in 'the springtime of
life,' or within the poignant reflections conveyed in that
ever-popular September Song -- but all that concerns the
wistful balladeer are "these few precious years" remaining to the
September lover. No clear awareness is suggested of what this
September way-station on life's journey is all about - its promise,
its highs and lows, concerns and rewards, defeats and challenges -
other than being a stage of advanced age (an age left entirely to the
listener's imagination). These need not be part of the song, to be
sure, but is anyone aware that such a wholegoing sense of this time
of life can be drawn from the reference?

For me, September has been a mixed and uncertain month, prompting
a gamut of responsive moods, as perhaps no other month does - all the
way from relief, in being beyond summer's whirlwind and crises, to
confusion at the sudden change of pace, even disorientation, to a
reactive yearning for retreat, to entire shifts in focus occasioned
by leaving the past behind, sometimes quite literally. All of this,
in large doses, came with the September of my own life. A sweet old
song it surely is, but it dwells only on time's passage, not the
nitty-gritty of what 'September years' are all about.

Even as to the age it suggests, are you at all clear on the years
that might constellate a 'September'? Make a guess. It could, of
course, be any age regarded as old, to carry the purpose of
the song, but I don't think you'll find any unanimity on it, or even
any agreement that it ought to represent a certain age, other
than by the judgement of those who'd invoke it in song or story.

Ah, but that is mistaken. The metaphor of September, whether it
ever meant a specific age or not, stands in relation to its cohorts
on an annual cycle; and if we can place either August or October, by
any good criteria, we can certainly come close to where September
must be.

Well, August is fairly easy for a
seasonalist to place. It has one of the strongest cue-points of the
entire calendar: the crest of summer, happening somewhere ahead of
its midpoint. (So we know, you see, that even if past his peak, the
September lover is not actually very far past it!) You should be able
to make a fair stab at which run of years, along the lifetime span,
might be seen as equivalent to high summer.

It would be sometime in the mid-forties, when the driving force of
one's first-half life suddenly quits - just as summer does in August
-- often characterized by crises of reflection on levels of
achievement and remaining potential. 'September,' then, is roughly
the time of one's early fifties, and the downside turbulence I've
described is very common to those years. My own such period was
largely spent living in the woods, some distance north of the San
Francisco Bay Area, so avidly in retreat that I honestly thought, at
times, I'd remain there for the rest of my life. And I've heard
others agonizing much the same circumstances in their early to
mid-fifties: discomfort, retreat (in one form or another), and a
disorienting loss of focus.

The midlife-crisis distress justifiably overshadows the post-fifty
distress, for it is more severe and dislocating, but the lesser and
later one can be quite disconcerting. The spirit, having so recently
come through a crunching 'August' experience, is in no fit condition
to welcome the 'September' experience with any great degree of cheer
- which makes a problematical passage of it, though not often a
hazardous one.

But all is not grim, even at these times of passage. The
seasonalist learns to step back from the scene, continually, and stay
aware that life's momentary experience incorporates the intermixed
influence of several potent cycles at once. Each year, of the
'September' spread, brings a springtime of its own, and the
underlying motif of the greater cyclic stage can be lifted by the
immediate experience of the lesser - just as the morning freshness
that I spoke of in my opening is capable of lifting the spirit, even
during life's much deeper winter season. In time, a feeling for these
interfaces, of one cycle level with another, teaches us to accept the
lows with the highs in the wise awareness that all things come in
moderation, and nothing remains forever the same. The shorter the
cycle, the more vivid is its experience; the longer the cycle, the
more pervasive is its hold. That is going to be our mantra, as it
were, for the course of this book, reminding us that neither one
effect nor the other is in total command of our times.

There is also the matter of individual
adaptability to the various motifs that constitute the seasonal
spectrum. Certainly everyone thrives on springtime; but some of us
seem better constitutionally disposed to handle the stress of high
summer, or the deep inwardness of winter. (Even the terms I employ:
stress and inwardness, tell you something of my own disposition
toward these seasons; others might describe them respectively as
times of excitement and times of alienation.) And even this
counterbalance is present in each of us, ready to emerge at
unpredictable moments, when our entire orientation seems to suddenly
go through an inversion. In a `good year,' for example (the effect of
a deeper underlying cycle), I've felt the summer as a series of
highs, instead of my more frequent experience of stress.

You can see, then, how personal the assessment of a seasonal
framework must always be. This does not, however, revoke the validity
or the general applicability of the larger pattern language, it
merely colors it to the complexion (and complexity) of the
individual. It also, perhaps, explains why the seasons, as
conditioning elements in personal life, have had difficulty finding
recognition in the scientific community, which is resistant to
anything so fluid of definition and demonstration, or so reliant upon
subjective experience for its data.

Does it seem, then, a bit confusing? Too many factors, what with
interacting and counter-balancing cycles, to be taken into
consideration? It's really not, when you see that all of the cycles
follow the same basic pattern. Once you are sensitized to the
pattern, and your personal leanings within it, you'll be able to
know, at any given time of life `where you are' and what are your
prospects (in terms of mood, energy, and what is going on in your
world). You'll have a far better sense of how to live with time - in
tune with time - knowing the best hours of the day, and the best
months of the year, for particular activities and undertakings . . .
able to take the shallow times in stride, for the realization that
they are merely stages along a cycle, a cycle known well enough for
you to feel confident about.

I am, myself, at the moment, projecting an early spring journey
abroad that I don't, as yet, feel at all comfortable about. But I am
basing it on certain awarenesses about the approach of spring, and my
particular situation along a seven-year cycle that appears to cast a
large influence over my life. I'm aware, at the same time, that the
plans could easily be upset by events that could develop at this
early time of year, as they have so frequently in the past. My
awareness of these cycles and their effects on my world permits me to
choose my moment with both confidence and caution, for the
cross-current of possibilities inspires both attitudes; but I know
the factors, and I can proceed with neither a foolhardy level of
confidence, nor the degree of dread that my present shallow energy
would - without such knowledge - tend to generate.

I have not mentioned that seven-year cycle before, as I did not
wish to stir yet another confusing ingredient into the pot. It will
come into the picture in due time. For the moment, we are dealing
only with the three major timespans: the day, the year, and the
lifetime - each giving us a unique 'window' on the configuration of
the cycle. Together, they constitute a kind of Rosetta Stone: three
versions of the pattern language, enabling us a larger understanding
of it than is readily conveyed by any single version. And each, in
turn, revealing finally a greater depth, on the very account of that
larger view.

It may help, here, to provide a demonstrative instance of this
'Rosetta effect,' so that you can see how each version of the pattern
enhances our perspective of each other version, and ultim-ately of
the entire picture. So let us return to the situation of the day's
opening, with which I began this appropriately opening chapter (and
it is doubly so, for this draft version is being written in the
'morning' of the year).

I was speaking rather loosely of
springtime, you'll recall, and its literal analogy with childhood and
the opening of a day. Well, let's bring it down to its narrower
specifics, and look at the full span of what can be regarded as the
opening of a new cycle, not just the final phase of it called
springtime. For it does begin much earlier, and is best regarded as
the emergence from a hibernation called sleep, or winter, most
effectively observed through the 'window' of the year, itself, since
its nuances are fully available to consciousness, which is not so for
the other cycle levels.

Here is how the observed, and many times confirmed, pre-spring
pattern goes: 1) there are stirrings in mid-January or earlier, often
a run of unseasonably good weather, and the earliest nubs of budding
on trees; 2) around the third week in January, several intermittent
days of early awakening, with a strong sense of energy; 3) the first
week in February is the focal (central) time for 'sprouts' - events
that have an unusually strong bearing on the course of activity that
the year eventuates - the full range of sprout-time being from about
January 23 to February 15, and occasionally even outside of those
boundaries; 4) following the sprouts, there is a long period (4 to 6
weeks) of apparent dormancy, wherein nothing of great note seems to
be happening; 5) forward motion seems to get fully underway with the
arrival of the equinoctial spring, around March 21st.

In the instance of a day's morning, the energy thrust that
constitutes the sprout is surely the moment of awakening. We have no
awareness at all of the two preceding phases, though the night's
final period of REM dreaming, just prior to awakening, is a likely
manifestation of our phase 2. Researchers have found that the dreams
just before waking have the highest verbal content and the fullest
level of recollection, suggesting that they've been filtered through
a left hemisphere no longer dormant. After the sprouting moment, as
already noted, there is that period of becoming fully awake (as we
tend to experience it), which confirms the pattern as phase 4.
Perhaps the most useful information provided by this 'window' (as a
'Rosetta' function) is the possible significance of the REM dreaming,
which suggests a kind of 'conference' taking place, between the
cortical hemispheres, just prior to the opening of the day.

For the lifetime cycle at this stage, nothing can be known of the
yet-to-be-born, except for the increasing fetal activity . . . is
this the parallel of phase 2, a stirring of pre-sprout energy? And is
it reasonable to assume, also, some pre-birth interaction between the
brain hemispheres - last-minute `directives,' so to speak, or perhaps
the calming of pre-birth anxieties? I know this is difficult for some
people to take seriously, but we really know almost nothing of the
right-hemisphere consciousness except that it does function as a
distinctive, independent mind-base from that of the left-hemisphere,
so that levels of inner dialogue are certainly conceivable.

As to the post-birth phase - the dormancy period, or more properly
in this case, the infancy period - it remains an open question, how
long this goes on. The more meaningful term, of course, is infancy,
but it doesn't fully convey (any more than dormancy) the sort of
'getting ready' motif, waiting combined with preparation, that
is taking place, as an outwardly inactive process. Quickening might
be the closest term, but it already designates a pre-birth function,
and there would not be much gained by introducing a confusion between
the two. Something requires organizing, or a 'coming to terms'
or `bringing up to speed' with outer reality, before this process is
fully complete. We know this phase exists in the morning timeframe,
from common daily experience (more evident for the aged, perhaps),
and we know it exists as a pre-spring function in the year, so it can
be assumed to take place as the first stage of what we commonly call
infancy, though we don't yet know the parameters: the normal length
of time, and the ways by which to clearly identify the pre-spring and
post-spring characteristics.

I state rather flatly that it is a known
function in the year's opening; how can I be so sure of it? The
evidence comes from several sources. First, the experience of my own
years: the gap, of about six weeks, from the time of my average
sprout until the clearly energized activity that roughly coincides
with the spring equinox. There is also a surprisingly good piece of
objective evidence that some energy surge takes place at that latter
moment. It comes from the work of a French geologist, Michel Siffre,
who secluded himself in a deep Texas cavern for six solid, solitary
months in 1972, having only one-way telephone contact with a surface
crew, who regulated his lighting - on and off, for 'day' and 'night,'
as he requested it - thus providing them with an accurate record of
the length of both parts of the circadian cycle as Siffre experienced
it, removed from all clues of sunlight or clocktime. It was
documented in the March 1975 issue of National Geographic.

They began in mid-February, and Siffre soon settled into a full
cycle of about 26 hours, though it went as high as 28.5. In his own
perception, these were normal days, as was the remarkable series that
began precisely at the spring equinox (which Siffre, keeping his own
calendar, would have judged to be three days earlier). All of a
sudden, his daily rhythm embarked on a secondary cycle. His full day
leaped up beyond 30 hours, then dropped gradually to his norm over
the next couple days, then surged up to 42 hours, dropped back again
over the next few days, then surged again to 45 . . . the pattern of
surges (five, in all) continued almost to mid-April, the highest one
registering just under 52 hours, and then it just as suddenly settled
back to his norm. To Siffre, of course, they were all merely normal
days of 24 hours each.

This evidence, arriving with no expectation, demonstrates with
reasonable finality a very real `energizing moment' that happens
right on the cusp of calendar springtime. Before the surges began,
Siffre's most recent dozen `nights' of sleep were averaging 8.2
hours, and after the surges ended they were averaging 7 hours, though
the length of his circadian norm remained about the same. The arrival
of equinox is not just the calendar certification of geophysical
mechanics, but a moment along the cyclic continuum with clear
consequence for the lives being pursued within this framework. The
one thing not resolved by this remarkable data is whether the
occasion was a purely physical response of the organism, or whether
it reflects some energizing activity of the psyche itself, keyed to
this moment along the cycle's path. The difference - if any indeed
exists - is whether the qualitative effect imparted by time
originates in the body or in the mind. Either way, Siffre's opportune
discovery has provided a brilliant proof that it does objectively
take place.

Unfortunately, it was a partly wasted
opportunity, in the very fact that it had not been anticipated. Had
the experiment been started even a month earlier, it might have also
indicated something of phases 2 or 3, in our pattern language's
opening stage . . . and maybe someday that will happen. But we do
have, yet, one more piece of 'independent evidence' of the long gap
that takes place between the sprout and the arrival of spring. This
exists in a strange bit of calendar lore that has come down to us
from the long, long ago. We call it Groundhog Day, a whimsical
observ-ance that nobody quite understands, though we continue to play
it out as a weatherman's fancy, every February 2nd. You know the
story: the Groundhog traditionally comes out of hibernation on that
day, and if he emerges to see his shadow, then he scurries back into
hiding and does not come out for another six weeks, supposedly
signifying a six-week extension of winter.

The fable apparently comes from the Celts, an ancient and rather
mystical group of tribes from Britain and northern Europe, of whom we
know very little as they left no written records. Calendar remnants,
however, tell us they had a strong sense of the seasons, and they
characteristically celebrated the arrival, not of the solstices and
equinoxes, but of the days halfway between, the so-called
cross-quarter days. One of these occurs in that first week in
February. They called it Imbolc, or Teltane, and it probably arrived
on the 5th or 6th of the month. But it was replaced by Candlemas, in
the Christianization that was supposed to civilize such heathen, and
shifted to the 2nd. Still, you could take the day away from the
pagan, but you could not take it without bringing the pagan
celebration along; and hence, we have Groundhog Day.

The Celts knew that there were six more weeks of winter, before
the quickening toward spring would be fully done; the knowledge is
preserved to us in ritual, in this quaint observance. The emerging
groundhog (the sprout) will see its shadow (the implied solar
presence representing the sprouting energy), and go plunging back
into its hole (its dormancy) for six more weeks. There is simply no
better way to account for the ritual's novel features and its clearly
precise timing.

Well, I have tried to capture the essence of our subject in this
opening chapter - it seemed like a good way to get started, since
we'll be dealing with areas half in, and half out of, the realm of
the known and accepted, and material that is as much subjective as
can be called 'fact.' In the chapters to follow, I shall expand upon
all that was touched upon here, but in a more organized fashion (I
hope). We'll set off, next time, with an emphasis on the foundational
material: the archetype and how it derives from the harmonic nature
of reality; why it can only be so on this particular planet (and what
implications that could have, for our escapist fantasies of planetary
migration). We'll probably get into some of the earliest awareness of
the archetypal pattern, reflected in the ancient Chinese calendar and
its approach to seasonal effect, which provides a virtual template
for understanding the ripening sequence that the pattern is all
about.

Subsequent chapters will bring the material into more practical
focus, and we'll be looking at how you can correlate the timing of
one pattern format with another, how they interact to offset or
accentuate each other, locating your own key moments along the
various sequelae, and how to construct a life-chart that will
illuminate where you've been, and help you to understand where you're
going. Just as we did this time with it's opening phase, we'll
consider each stage of the pattern in greater detail as it comes
along in the year, so that the moment will heighten your ability to
relate it to your own life. You'll begin to experience the two
aspects of a seasonalist's craft: living by what he learns, and
learning from what he lives.

It is up to you, of course, how deeply you want to get into this
material. I can only assure you that it is worth the trouble. It has
become the backbone of my life, along with simplified economics - as
necessary to my ongoing sense of well-being as would a navigational
grasp of the heavens be to a seaman adrift in a lifeboat on an
unknown sea (as, indeed, we all are!).

As these chapters appear, I expect that each will fill an issue.
And they may not be entirely consecutive, for I often have other
things to write about. I'm hoping to get it all across in seven
chapters, over the course of the year - though you should know by now
that everything, with me, remains to be seen. But that's the target,
at least.